Leonie Freeman: Property Institute CEO weighs in on new earthquake-based building rules

The Government recently confirmed they were going to overhaul the assessment of earthquake-prone buildings - a move welcomed by property owners and building engineers alike.

The changes will leave just 80 buildings needing full retrofits and 1500 buildings will still need some remediation - many of them in Wellington.

Property Institute CEO Leonie Freeman has welcomed these changes and claimed they'll help communities grow.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Staying on property. Property owners and engineering experts are welcoming
the shake up of the earthquake building rules that we're
announced by Chris Pink today. Government is limiting the kind
of buildings that these rules will be applied to. We
concrete buildings three stories or higher or buildings constructed with
unreinforced masonry. Leone Freeman is the chief executive of the
Property Institute and with us Highlyoni.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hi, good afternoon.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
You welcoming them too, Yes, very much.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
So we see it as a common sense approach that
still continues to preserve life safety, which is the key objective.
But it doesn't leave our communities as ghost towns, which
is what's been happening with so many derelict buildings and
small towns in our biggest cities.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
How quickly, realistically will some of those buildings open up again,
like Reading Cinema in Wellington or the Amora Hotel.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Yeah, it's I mean this legislation, this announcement today is
just the first step in it. So it will go
through and the legislation will be developed, and I understand
that the bill will be passed before the next year's.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
So it's still a bit of time to go.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
But what it has done is, you know, it's signaling
to the industry what is going to happen, and so
I think that is a positive thing. When it comes
to specific buildings, you know, we still have to see
what the details going to to that sits under it,
because they're talking about creating a new assessment tool and
we want to understand so the you know, for something

(01:25):
like the reading cinema cinema, we'd have to wait and
see the detail.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
How many stories is that.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
The reading cinema. I'm not not sure. I'm not a Wellingtonian,
but I look very high.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
I don't think so. It might be two or three years.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
So then basically it's it's all go, isn't it. No?

Speaker 3 (01:46):
You know, they've still got to do the assessment because
what they're trying to do with this is they want
to focus on the high risk buildings. And I can't
comment on the reading cinema to see whether it's high
risk or not, so I'm not making any comment on that.
But what it is doing is saying instead of having
a blanket rule which sort of covers everybody and everything,
they're saying we're going to be a lot more nuanced

(02:09):
and it's going to be, you know, whether an urban
center or a smaller town, whether it's three stories plus,
which probably the reading cinema is, and if you've got
an unreinforced masonry building. So it's focused on really trying
to solve the problems that create risk for people in
buildings rather than a blanket approach.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
What do you think the impact on insurance will be?

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, that's a good question.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Again, the more certainty we can provide in the space,
the better for everyone involved, because because the rules have
kept changing and people, you know, you can have different
engineers go to a building and somebody says, oh, it's
fifty percent of the NBS or New Building standard and
someone else says it's seventy percent, And then an owner

(02:57):
might upgrade a building, but then in a few years
after it they have to upgrade again. It's just created
a whole lot of uncertainty and people have just stopped
and said, well, we you know, and we've seen a
lot more buildings become derelict, empty and not being updated.
So I think once we get through this, then you know,

(03:18):
the insurance premiums I think, you know, because they are
targeted at what they perceive as risk and to me,
this is part of that whole risk assessment.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Leoni.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
By the way, have you caught up on this business
with the Dixon Street flats in Wellington?

Speaker 2 (03:32):
No, I can't say I have.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
I'll go and read about it. It'll fascinate you. Thank you
for your time. I really appreciated. Leoni Freeman, Chief Executive
Property Institute.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
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